Google sees a future in web feed metrics and RSS feed advertising and buys the increasingly popular FeedBurner.

The FeedBurner blog confirms that Google has bought the company. This is an acquisition that makes perfect sense for Google.

Feedburner provides information on web feed users

Feedburner will provide Google with additional information on what blogs (and sites) people find useful and popular. After all, you will not subscribe to a web or RSS feed unless you find it valuable. Hence a web feed subscription can be counted as a vote for that blog. That is information that can be made part of the search engine result algorithm.

A new advertising arena

Secondly, as web feeds are getting increasingly popular, more and more traffic moves away from the regular sites over to feed readers. Many sites will now include complete articles in their web feeds, meaning that people may read them without visiting the sites themselves. This is an advertising opportunity Google will not risk to miss.

Google has experimented with RSS AdWords text ads. Feedburner already has an ad system that works.

Google Analytics + FeedBurner = a total picture of traffic

Finally, given that Google has entered the web metrics scene with its free statistics package Google Analytics, it makes sense to add a feed metrics package, as well. Feedburner is, as far as we know, the best and most advanced web feed manager and measurement package available today. We certainly use it.

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